Dirty Sexy Money: "Pilot" Advance Review

So very dirty, so very sexy, so much money, and so much fun.

An especially nice surprise, the extremely fun Dirty Sexy Money makes it debut this week. Yes, this is a soap opera, but it's an incredibly funny one that is purposely extreme in its depiction of a family that lives up to the title of the series. The family in question is the Darlings, billionaires who are the closest thing to royalty that New York has. Our entryway into this world is mild-mannered attorney Nick George, played by Six Feet Under's Peter Krause.

Nick's father was the Darlings lawyer, a position which caused a lot of resentment for Nick, who felt he had to share his dad with the ever-needy family. When his dad dies, Nick thinks he'll finally be rid of the Darlings, but Darling patriarch Tripp (Donald Sutherland) has other plans. He makes Nick the proverbial offer he can't refuse, asking him to come on as the new family lawyer. Against his better judgment, Nick accepts this offer and with it all of the amazing strain that comes with the family's constant demands.

Peter Krause in Dirty Sexy Money

The Darlings include matriarch Letitia (Jill Clayburgh), and a bevy of troubled siblings - Patrick (William Baldwin), Karen (Natalie Zea), Brian (Glenn Fitzgerald), Juliet (Samaire Armstrong) and Jeremy (Seth Gabel). Baldwin, in his most high profile role in years, is very funny as the politician in the family who could be ruined by a secret he's keeping. Karen is a drunken mess who speaks whatever is on her mind, including telling her husband-to-be that Nick was the one who "deflowered" her, right in front of Nick. Fitzgerald is especially funny as Brian, who may have become a priest, but is hardly a symbol of purity, threatening to slash the tires of someone who angers him, before storming off to perform a baptism. Juliet and Jeremy are the most spoiled brats of the bunch - Juliet is the vapid, would-be actress, and Jeremy spends his night playing poker with Ethan Hawke and bedding famous women.

Dirty Sexy Money was created by Six Feet Under's Craig Wright, who executive produces along with Greg Berlanti (Everwood), Josh Reims (Felicity), Matthew Gross (Day Break) and X-Men director Bryan Singer. The pilot episode for the series is great, striking just the right winking tone and delivering more (intentional) laughs than most of ABC's supposed new comedy series like Crapoolers and Cavemen. The characters are intentionally amped up and extreme, but the cast, including Zoe McLellan as Nick's wife, manage to keep them nicely believable, even amongst their ridiculous behavior. Krause is the perfect straight man at the center of it all; Nick is a good guy in a very morally ambiguous world, and the series will likely follow his attempt to stay on the right path, as he's pushed by the Darlings to do increasingly shady things.

The pilot also introduces a bit of a mystery element, which has to do with the death of Nick's father and his history with the Darlings. All of the aspects of the show work very well together, and if the writers can sustain the wit and charm they establish early on, this could be a show that quickly becomes appointment television. There are a ton of great one-liners in the pilot to Dirty Sexy Money, but I'll resist quoting them all, because they're worth hearing in the proper context on the series itself.

The comedic soap is a tricky thing to pull off and even shows that have done it very well like The O.C. and Desperate Housewives have had trouble keeping up the pace and not crossing the line into groan inducing stories that lose the amusing and self-aware feeling they began with. But so far, the Darlings seem like they could do a good job of keeping us entertained.